The Scottish Government are committed to continuing to improve the promotion, quality, and implementation of Self-directed Support.

Due to changes in SG accounting systems and SG Retention Policies it has not been possible to obtain details of all funding awarded since 1997. Since the Self-Directed Support Scotland Act 2013 came into force in 2014, Scottish Government has provided a total of £46.6m to strategic delivery partners which include Social Work Scotland, Inspiring Scotland, In Control, Self-Directed Support Scotland, The Alliance and Transformation a Funding to all Local Authorities. These Strategic Delivery Partners support the delivery of SDS and direct payments through, in excess of 1000, membership organisations.

It has not been possible to estimate funding spent solely on promotion of direct payments and Self-Directed Support since 1997. This is due to funding recipients not recording actual spend for direct promotional activities, however all funding recipients promote the use of direct payments and self-directed support in all activities funded. Therefore, as all the Self-directed Support Strategic Delivery partners support all people that require social care, the full amount of funding supports disabled people's organisations either directly or indirectly through our strategic delivery partners membership organisations throughout Scotland.

Promotion of direct payments and Self-directed Support has been different for each organisation and has taken many forms such as expenditure on communication, engagement with social work users and working with Local Authorities to raise awareness of available processes therefore making it difficult to define and determine exactly how much budget has been used towards it

The Scottish Government acknowledges that the STUC have declared a cost-of-living emergency and are calling for a national food summit.

We know that inflation is having the biggest impact on those with the lowest incomes. The UK Government holds most of the powers needed to tackle this crisis but the Scottish Government are doing what we can within our devolved powers and fixed budget, and have allocated almost £3 billion to a range of supports this year that will contribute to mitigating the impact of the increased cost of living on households. This includes work to tackle child poverty, reduce inequalities and support financial wellbeing, alongside social security payments not available anywhere else in the UK.

We have already consulted on a draft plan on ending the need for food banks and will publish a final version of this in the Autumn. This will further strengthen cash-first responses to hardship so that people have the income they need to access food and other essentials.

In addition, on 17 March 2022, the Scottish Government established a short-life Food Security and Supply Taskforce to monitor potential disruption to the food and drink supply chain as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The Taskforce recognised that, while immediate supplies of food are secure, there is greater strain on the food supply chain than has been seen for many years, as a result of cumulative shocks to it from COVID-19, Brexit and the Ukraine conflict.

The Taskforce report was published on 23 June 2022 and included a series of recommendations that it hopes will help to bolster industry confidence during these hugely challenging times. [ Short Life Food Security and Supply Taskforce: report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ]

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09352 on 12 July 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Over the course of this parliament, we have committed to investing £1.8 billion into zero emissions heating and energy efficiency across Scotland. This includes the Scottish Government’s Home Energy Scotland Loan and Cashback scheme which currently provides households with up to £17,500 of combined loan and cashback funding for the installation of zero emissions heating systems.

The current Home Energy Scotland loan scheme has been operational and supporting households for some time, with the cashback element introduced in 2020. Through the Heat in Buildings Strategy we have also committed to replacing the cashback element of the scheme with a standalone grant during the course of 2022-23.

In developing the new grant scheme and setting grant levels, we are examining a range of evidence. This consideration will include the recent reports published by Nesta. This report and follow up report ‘how to increase the demand for heat pumps’ published in June 2022 by Nesta raises many informative findings, amongst them that a combination of incentives was found to be the most effective in increasing heat pump uptake, in particular a grant combined with lower running costs of the system.

The Scottish Government aims to make the installation of zero emissions heating systems both desirable and achievable for households across Scotland, and the future development of the Home Energy Scotland Loan and Grant scheme will play a large part in this.

Scottish Government has invested £2,959,658.23 in the Support in the Right Direction (SiRD) programme in financial year 2022-23. The SIRD programme is managed by Inspiring Scotland and has a presence in all 32 local authority areas, with each SiRD organisation providing services targeted to the needs of disabled people.

As all Self-directed Support Strategic Delivery partners support all people that require social care, Inspiring Scotland are committed to ensuring that all funding made available to SiRDS organisations either directly or indirectly support the needs of disabled people through accessing services provided by SiRD organisations

The various review strands are continuing to make progress. The review work will be proportionate and will be led by what is being found in the initial phases.

Review of Open Cases

Users of the system were asked to review their caseload of open cases, to look at prevalence of the risk scoring/level issue or the alcohol/drugs scoring issue. The Scottish Government have now completed that user led review of the nearly 12,000 cases that social work recognise as their open caseload on the system. Based on the responses by social work practitioners, they did not identify any immediate public protection risks related to these two scoring issues. The open cases review did substantiate that there are cases where the risk scoring levels have not matched. All the cases with the risk scoring error are also being reviewed by the Risk Management Authority (the RMA) as part of their determination of whether there was any material impact on the management of the case as a result of the scoring error.

The open cases review was also an opportunity for social work to identify any wider prevalence of the errors or any new system issues in respect of system functionality. There were not any new errors related to scoring identified through this route.

The open cases review identified some practice issues, around cases not being timeously closed on the system. Therefore, we are undertaking a further phase of this exercise to ensure that closed cases or cases in the process of being closed are indeed closed off on the system, and returns are completed for us on those. That work is likely to conclude in mid-August. Once that phase of work has been completed we will be able to provide a final picture of cases where either the risk scoring or the drugs/alcohol scoring issue (or both) were present. Those details will be cross checked against the RMA lists of affected cases, to consider if these need to be added into the RMA review of any material impact on the management of the case. Our expectation at the moment is that the open case review findings will largely tally with the RMA lists, but we cannot confirm that until the open case review process fully concludes for those cases needing closed off on the system.

The open cases review also provided an opportunity for social work to check and if necessary amend any entries that were not correct on the system. This work on amending individual cases was a key part of the work needed before the system can be brought back into operation. In the meantime, users of the system continue to make use of the paper based version of the process where LS/CMI is needed.

RMA led review work

The group continues to meet and will report on all phases. This will include recommendations and an action plan, to be communicated to Ministers and the Justice Committee. It is anticipated an update on the first phases of the review will be provided in August 2022 with all work now scheduled for completion by the end of October 2022. These timescales will be reviewed at each stage.

Phase 1

As previously reported to the Justice Committee by letter on 12 May 2022, phase one of the review is complete, which significantly reduced the number of cases that required further review.

Phase 2

Phase two commenced on 4 May 2022 and has involved Social Work, Scottish Prison Service, Parole Board for Scotland and MAPPA coordinators considering the material impact of how cases were handled. The timescale for this review was extended to allow for robust validation to be undertaken by agencies. There has been substantial collaboration by partners in order to provide returns and the RMA will be reviewing these in order that the LS/CMI review group can consider the outcome of the first two phases by August 2022. At this point the review group has agreed to review its terms of reference and provide interim findings.

Phase 3

The RMA, Care Inspectorate and HMIPS continue to develop the methodology and focus of the external validation which will provide assurance on each stage of the review. Subject to the outcome of phase two, this work is scheduled to commence in August 2022 and the review is expected to conclude in October 2022.

LS/CMI IT system

The Scottish Government appointed a third party provider to work alongside the managed service provider for the LS/CMI system. This was for the purpose of conducting an end-to-end review of the LS/CMI system prior to any re-introduction for use. The Discovery phase of that work is now largely complete, with areas of dysfunction within the system identified that we believe have led to the known scoring issues. This process has resulted in the production of a detailed functional specification of the system, along with updated user guides. It is likely that going forward, resuming use of the system will require some technical fixes, as well as some training and practice improvements. What will follow is a stage of triaging and remediation, to prioritise what will be done and applying the fixes.

The Scottish Government have also been in the process of tendering for a managed service provider for this system. This process pre-dated the discovery of the IT errors, and it was delayed as a result of the errors being found. Following announcement of the outcome of that process, it is likely that any triaging and remediation of the system will be conducted under the new contractual period, which, on current planning would likely begin in August.

While the review work has taken longer than originally envisaged, it is being conducted thoroughly, and with positive engagement from justice partners as these review demands are being managed on top of existing workloads.

The Green Freeports bidding process closed on 20 June and five bids were submitted from: North East Scotland Green Freeport; Clyde Green Freeport; Forth Green Freeport; Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport; and Orkney Green Freeport. Neither P&O Ferries nor DP World are involved in any of these bids.

The Scottish Government has been clear that fair work practices sit at the heart of Green Freeports and any application which does not show a clear commitment to fair work practices will not be supported by the Scottish Government. We are determined to ensure that Green Freeports will create significant numbers of good, green jobs, and deliver positive benefits for Scotland’s businesses, workers and communities.

As of 1 July 2022, a total of 1,031 installations have been delivered using interim vouchers at a value of £399,468. A further 204 interim vouchers have been issued at a potential value of £73,847. In addition, 1,237 installations have been delivered using main vouchers at a value of £3,104,256, with a further 762 main vouchers issued at a potential value of £2,631,657.

It is worth noting that vouchers issued do not always lead to installations being completed and, therefore, may not lead to actual spend – this can be for a number of reasons, such as the beneficiary deciding they no longer wish to proceed.

The Scottish Government welcomed Professor Muir’s recommendation in relation to the creation of a shared framework for the inspection of early learning and childcare (ELC) to be developed between the education inspectorate and the Care Inspectorate. We have today launched a consultation to seek the sector’s views on current inspection arrangements in ELC and school-age childcare and a proposal for a shared inspection framework. This can be accessed at the consultations page of the Scottish Government’s website until 28 October.

The Scottish Government provide annual funding to the Energy Saving Trust to manage and administer the Low Carbon Transport Loan (LCTL). There are no applications submitted before the 1 December 2021 pending completion. 74 applications are currently awaiting vehicle delivery before loan payments are issued to loan applicants.